Sinn Féin Louth TD Gerry Adams has welcomed the decision in the Belfast High Court on Tuesday to challenge the decision of the Public Prosecution Service (the North’s equivalent of the DPP) not to prosecute anyone in relation to the murder of Louth man Seamus Ludlow.

Teachta Adams said:

“Seamus Ludlow was shot dead by a UVF/Red Hand Commando/UDR (Ulster Defence Regiment) gang in May 1976. He was aged 47. His body was thrown into a ditch near his Thistle Cross, Dundalk home.

“In 1979 the RUC identified four suspects it believed were responsible for the killing. Nineteen years later, in February 1998, the four were finally arrested.

“Two confessed to killing Seamus Ludlow during interviews with the RUC. They were released without charge.

“The North’s then Director of Public Prosecutions decided in October 1998 not to prosecute the four. Among the four men were two serving officers in the Ulster Defence Regiment.

“The Gardaí never interviewed the four men and never told the family. The first the family heard of the four suspects was in a newspaper report.

“The Ludlow family went to the Belfast High Court and challenged the decision not to prosecute and the failure to provide reasons for this.

“The Irish government should now move to establish the two outstanding Commissions of Investigation – which it has thus far refused to do – which were recommended by the Final Report on the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Murder of Seamus Ludlow by the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence & Women’s Rights in March 2006.

“That report expressed its “disappointment at the lack of co-operation from the British authorities … the role collusion played in the murder of Seamus Ludlow.”